baby shower!

we got a fun package in the mail from marty and sara...check out this cute dress from peru!

Last Saturday, our pastor's wife and daughter gave me a baby shower for all of my girlfriends at church. we had a great time playing silly games and eating some yummmy comfort food (they are from texas)! here are some pictures from the shower, starting with the winning play-dough baby:
chugging bottles:

trying to guess the baby food:

yummm lemon meringue pie and chocolate mousse pie and a diaper cake! all the other delicious food got gone before i could even take a picture!!

check out the cute bag Ruby made for Suzy!

I don't know if Suzy's daddy is gonna let her go out in this leopard print bathing suit....;-)

the whole gang...thanks for everything!!

the Henriquez gals:

the 3 pregnant gals from church:

in other news, i don't know if you would call it a craving, but i have really enjoyed drinking fresh fruit juices that they sell on the street by our house everyday. i love that in el salvador you can buypractically anything you need in a handy plastic bag: ketchup/mayonnaise, sour cream, soft drinks to go, juice, etc. my favorite juice flavor of this week has been fresh orange/carrot/strawberry juice. it's the best way to eat carrots (well, other than eating carrots in Sakura japanese food!) Every afternoon usually consists of going to get a juice and homemade plantain or yucca chips with lime and salt (also sold in a bag on the street) and usually at some point in every day i eat a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, or at least realllly want to eat one.

we've also enjoyed having Lulu over several days this week to play. it's been great practice!

happy independence day!

Today is Independence Day here, which means no school, and a half day on friday and yesterday! So we took advantage of our free time to go up to Comasagua and check out the new, almost finished house of our friends Pastor Jose Luis and Sylvia and their 7 kids. Sylvia greeted up with homemade corn tamales and atol, a hot sweet corn drink made from corn that was just picked on Sunday. Marty and Sara, yall would've loved it! You have probably heard us talk a lot about this family, and we are so excited that they finally have their own house after all the struggles they have gone through, big enough for all of the kids to even have their own room! God provided this miracle for them through donations from Quaker Gap Baptist and First Baptist Wallace. When the mission team came down in July, they worked on starting the foundation and moving the dirt to make room for the house, and now just 2 months later, its almost completely finished, with fancy tile floors and a second story balcony seen here:Here is cute little Ashley, growing up quickly: The 4 youngest of the 7 kids and their favorite playmate, Elvis:

Their eldest daughter Elizabeth's room:

We also took advantage of the half-day to go on a picnic at our favorite park:

A huge locust that was as big as Elvis's hand:

Tonight we are having an Independence Day party, ironically enough for our foreign co-workers and friends. What better way to celebrate independence than with pupusas!

100 days to go!

Today i was looking at the countdown on how long we have to go until little Suzy gets here, and today we are at 100 days to go! I feel like time is going so slow, but i think time will start passing by realll fast from here on out, as we realize all there is to do before she comes! This week was also a milestone because i realized that hardly any of my clothes fit. And we're not talking about normal clothes. No, i left those behind a long time ago. Even a lot my maternity clothes don't fit now! This was the cause of a minor breakdown for me (possibly because of crazy pregnancy hormones), but luckily i have the best husband ever who is the best shopper ever! He went downtown the very next day to check out all the thrift stores and buy me new (to me!) maternity clothes! If there was ever a person who could last longer than me shopping in a thrift store, it's elvis. luckily, he loves digging around, finding treasures, and boy did he find some treasures! with $17, he bought me 2 pairs of jeans, 3 pairs of dress pants for work, 2 shirts, and a pair of long shorts. and the crazy thing is that every single thing fits me perfectly! i've decided to never go shopping again, just send my personal shopper for me!
watch out, tomorrow we are down into the double digits on the countdown!!

baby update!

Our little girl is growing all the time! it has been fun to experience the new changes over the past couple of months. First, i could only feel her little tiny movements, then 5 weeks ago, Elvis felt a kick for the first time. And now we can even see her little body moving around in my tummy! it's such a weird feeling like i have never felt before to see my abdomen doing "the wave". i love it! it's a party in my stomach all day long!
We have been pretty set for a while (ok, like 2 years) that her name will be Suzy _________. We are still debating over middle names, but we like to be able to go ahead and call her by her name! My dad has called me Suzy Q my whole entire life, so i feel like i'm passing on my name even though it's not my official name! So please pray for Suzy when you get a chance. I think it's safe to say that Suzy has Daddy wrapped around her little finger even from the womb, even if it is a little tiny finger! Right now she weighs about1.5 pounds and is about 13.5 inches long. I read last week that my uterus is now the size of a soccer ball! crazy! anyway, like i said, i love being pregnant. and not just for the perks, like everyone rushing around to pick things up off the floor for you and the fact that i didn't even have to wait in the long line at the bank today!


In other news, the kiddos came back to school last monday, which is why i have been waaaay too busy to think about blogging, or relaxation in general for that matter. My new job position has been challenging (physically also since i have to walk up to my 3rd floor office about a billion times a day!) but i have enjoyed the challenge. all that stair climbing makes me feel like i deserve chocolate any ol' time i want. anyways, mom and dad, elvis took a first day of school picture of me because we knew you would want us to continue with the tradition!

weekend getaway to the mountains!

Since this coming Monday is my first day of school and this week has been extremely hectic due to all my responsibilities as High School English Coordinator (eek!), we took advantage of a free weekend last weekend to go spend the night in the mountains in this cute little town that we actually went to spend a day in over vacation week (the pictures from the last post are from there too). We stayed at a real cute cabin tucked away among tons of flowers and trees and had the best time just drinking coffee picked and roasted right there in that town, eating good food, and enjoying the cool air and flowers. here are a ton of pictures of the flowers around our cabin and other sights in town, but to start off, here is this week's belly shot! our baby girl is growing every week!

our cabin:

coffee beans:

breakfast on the porch of our cabin:

dinner:

coffee beans being roasted:

IT'S A.....

GIRL!!!

We are soooooo excited to finally know that our little baby is a girl! we have all been convinced the whole time that it was a boy, and we were happy with that, but know that i know it's a girl, i can tell that deep down i really wanted a girl!! we had lots of obstacles to overcome to finally get the ultrasound today (including having to find another place to have it done because the woman i had an appointment with was on vacation...go figure! and also having to go to 5 different atm machines to find one that worked) She weighs exactly one pound right now, and everything looks great!

We tried to keep ourselves busy this week to make it go faster, we were so anxious about the ultrasound! We had several fun adventures, and several days just completely relaxing and watching our new obsession, Prison Break! Someone loaned us the first season, which we devoured this week. It's definitely a show that is best to watch from the very beginning, and on DVD so you don't have to wait a week to find out what happens next!

We spent one day up in the mountains with friends, and yesterday several of us went out to the Hippy Hideout at the lake. We also went to the Sheraton hotel one day just to hang out by their cool pool all day, and had a fun picnic with Lulu (David and Lucy also!). Here are some pictures from the week:

pictures from the mountain trip:

i'm reallly enjoying my chocolate mint frappacino here...the most caffeine ive allowed myself to have in the past 5 months, but totally worth it!

Picnic:

And now, lake pictures:

Lulu is getting to know the puppy Lulu sharing her cookie with the puppy (which Lulu continued to eat later!)
Can you find Elvis??

So, we took a boat ride all the way across the lake (which is about 6 miles) in a little bitty boat, and the skies were blue and beautiful. however, on the way back, as soon as we reached the middle of the lake, we realized we were the only boat on the whole lake, and we could see the thunderstorm slowly overcoming the lake! we were soon tossed from side to side, and completely soaked to the bone by the waves and rain. we were laughing so hard and were so scared (i just kept thinking about the fact that dad has been struck by lightning twice and it could run in the family), we didn't get pictures of the mayhem out in the middle of the lake. but can you believe we took this picture literally 5 minutes before the storm starting, while we were already heading back to the other side of the lake??

here, is everyone is starting to get worried about the clouds, the lightning in the distance, and the fact we are in a tiny boat with metal rods sticking up...

We made it across safely however! Now, back to the real world on monday after 2 weeks of vacation!

cravings

So, you may remember an earlier post about our new love for sushi, thanks to our friends Cristina and Charlie for introducing us to it! Turns out, the week they first took us, and we fell in love with it, was also the week I got pregnant, and really it's not such a good idea to eat raw fish while pregnant, nor have your food prepared in a place where they do work with raw fish. So, we had put our sushi cravings on hold until recently, when Marty and Sara sent us a package of all the stuff so we can make our own sushi at home, without raw fish anywhere near!

So this week we got out our sushi book, and gave it a try. As we were preparing it, I got a real pregnancy craving for this crab dip that Tyler used to make, and we already had most of the ingredients, since we were going to use cream cheese and crab in our sushi. Luckily for my cravings, we only live one block from the grocery store, so I sent Elvis out to get the other stuff for the crab dip appetizer, while I started on the sushi. I don't have a picture of the crab dip because it got gone so fast, but thanks Tyler for helping me out in my time of need! =) This was only the second craving i've had while pregnant...the first one was for a tomato sandwich at like 11pm. They have several sayings down here...like, if you don't eat what you are craving when you are pregnant, your baby will be born with its mouth open, wanting that food. or something like that. anyways, here are some pictures of the sushi, which turned out pretty well i would say, for it being our first time.

in other news, all schools and colleges in the country have been closed this past week, due to swine flu. i haven't really heard of that many people getting it, at least no one close to us, but they don't want many people gathering so as to not spread it more. and, this week, the whole country has vacation. so, we both ended up getting 2 weeks of vacation from work and school! you see, each town in el salvador has a patron saint, whom they celebrate once a year with festivals. turns out, here in the capital, we don't have a patron saint, but rather we celebrate Jesus, which is pretty cool. so this week, everybody gets vacation to celebrate the "Saviour of the World", which in spanish literally translates to "El Salvador del mundo". i like that our country is named after Jesus, the Saviour.